By Olukorede Yishau
It is a lonely time: longer nights and days without elastic limit; and weeks that are staggering in outlook. Everything seems strange; miles apart from what we knew. In the firm grip of a virus with proprietorial virtues we are. The virus wants a place in villages, it seeks rooms in towns and desires mansions in cities, and many cities of the world are under its boot struggling to extricate themselves.
The virus, I feel, wants us to live day to day, do what we have to do each day and not think about tomorrow as though the future will take care of itself. It wants us to run to it and run with it! But it is neither our lord nor our saviour, and its tune we will not dance to.
Doctors have died or contracted COVID-19 caring for patients and doctors have continued to take care of patients. Nurses are at breaking point caring and they have continued to care. Lab scientists have contracted the virus testing samples and testing has not been abandoned. They are the angels of mercy in a season that demands courage, and many are displaying it at a time some are denying the existence of the virus. Maybe it needs to strike someone dear to them, or them before they accept its existence.
Each day we wake up to bad news: Coronavirus deaths everywhere across the globe; friends and neighbours who had been breadwinners losing jobs; well-wishers happily accepting pay cuts and colleagues tearfully being furloughed, and businesses taking decisions that months ago were unthinkable. Capitalism has never been more ruthless. It is tearing down walls. I have heard of a company that collapsed a whole department. I have heard of a bank which donated N1 billion to fight COVID-19 only to attempt throwing several employees into the labour market. It took the regulator to get it to pull the plug.
Questions occupy minds – How long will this go on? What should I do? And will this really pass? These questions are asked mostly by workers at the mercy of capitalism. It, however, looks like the turn of workers in the civil service to ask these questions will soon be here.
Now when our phones ring, fear grips us and we carefully check who the caller is before deciding whether or not the call should be answered. Answering the call depends on whether or not the caller can do damage to our purse, which has never been this lean. Calls from unknown numbers have never been considered with more care! These are the signs of the time we are in; it is not that we are mean!
In the developed world, many employers also pay their employees half of their pay for working from home. But there is a difference – governments have come in to make up for the losses. In the United States, for example, every taxpayer has received some stimulus package – which also covers non-citizens – once you are a legal resident and you pay tax, you get paid some dollars to ease the pain of the loss. If you have children, your kids also get about half of what you are paid. Landlords have also been mandated not to harass their tenants over non-payment or late payment of rents. These may not cover all your losses, but you are not left to bear the losses alone. A local government in Texas only last week wrote property owners in the area to seek information about tenants unable to pay their rents because of the pandemic; it was willing to pay as much as $1,050 for each tenant.
But our dear Nigeria is handicapped to offer us real reliefs. What some of us have received is tokenism. Those described as the vulnerable have received this token. But, in the end, it appears we are all vulnerable, especially salary earners who, at the end of April, began to receive the shock of their lives when the bank alerts refused to come or came with half or a quarter of their pay. There is even a small firm where all the workers got for April was some cash to buy food.
I have seen people who argued that companies should have gone into their reserves to cushion the effect of the financial dire strait, and my response is: many companies in Nigeria are like the Federal Government, with severely depleted reserves, or no reserves at all! They are run based on what I see as ‘run-as-you-go’. If they do not earn money in a particular month, surviving the next month will be like a blind man trying to fix thread into a needle.
Nigeria as a country has dipped its hand so much into the reserves that all there is left is an embarrassing $34.58 billion. It has been this way since April 7. The reserves had $38.53 billion on January 2. No less than $3.95 billion has been taken from it in the last three months. The oil price has tumbled to an all-time low and, being a mono-economy, we have no choice than to keep dipping our hands into the reserves. Soon, there may be nothing there again as it is the situation for many businesses in the country.
Every government, since we returned to democracy in 1999, has been mouthing diversifying the economy, but this has always ended up as mere campaign sloganeering. No concrete effort is discernible along this line. The agricultural sector that we should have relied on was neglected for years. What this era has shown is that agriculture is ever reliable. Export for agricultural products has soared since the pandemic began and we can build on that to make our ways prosperous and then we can have good success.
There are fears that our country is heading towards a recession. The last time we were in a recession, shortly after President Muhammadu Buhari took over the reins of power in 2015, our lives were hellish. Many companies could not pay salaries for months, and when they eventually started meeting their obligations to their members of staff, it was because investors recapitalised. Recession at a time like this is like jumping from the frying pan to fire. But it does not look like we can avert it. And when that happens, capitalism will do what it knows how to do best: Access the situation and take business decisions. Such business decisions have never been known to favour workers. Jobs will be lost. Salaries will be slashed. And tears will flow.
I have one fear for workers in the public service – the pandemic has come at a time the minimum wage issue has not been fully resolved. With the pandemic, I foresee a situation where many states will be unable to pay the minimum wage. Already Labour is saying the pandemic should not be an excuse not to pay salaries. During the last recession, states found it hard to cope. Now, there is a pandemic and recession is looming; public sector workers will feel what those in the private sector have started feeling. It is a matter of time.
I have one fear for workers in the public service – the pandemic has come at a time the minimum wage issue has not been fully resolved. With the pandemic, I foresee a situation where many states will be unable to pay the minimum wage. Already Labour is saying the pandemic should not be an excuse not to pay salaries. During the last recession, states found it hard to cope. Now, there is a pandemic and recession is looming; public sector workers will feel what those in the private sector have started feeling. It is a matter of time.
My final take: These are not the best of times for workers. Jobs are being lost. Salaries are being slashed. Furlough is the new fad. And tears are being shed. Pillows are being told tales they have no means of understanding by souls unsure of how to handle their joblessness or reduction in income. Who will dry the workers’ tears? Lord, have mercy!